On this episode of The Drum tributes flow for Malcolm Fraser, a former Wallabies captain standing up against on-field homophobic slurs, the passing of Singapore's controversial first PM, and did the Government try to bury a report into abuse in immigration detention?

If Mike Baird's Coalition wins the NSW election this weekend then Tony Abbott will have passed a leadership hurdle and will fight on till the May budget.

And then if the PM's "nothing to see here" approach to the budget pays dividends, and he gets a poll boost from appreciative voters who have the memory spans of goldfish, he may even make it to the end of the year.

But where does the Government go from there? Abbott is sacrificing the Coalition's reputation as a sound economic manager just to save his leadership.

The Federal Government has reversed its position on a statutory authority to oversee Australia's quarantine system. The Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce announced on Thursday that the government will legislate for an independent, statutory Inspector General for Biosecurity, despite saying for months that that wasn't necessary. Labor says it's an embarrassing backdown for the government, that only goes part-way to meeting the Beale Review recommendations. Read more here.